He lifted the big fifty. The black muzzle was no more than inches from Shig’s still-placid face. The muscles on Tadeki’s forearm flexed under smooth skin as he took up the slack on the trigger.

Instinctively Kalico cowered away, anticipating the instantaneous explosion of Shig’s head, a peculiar prickling on her skin and face as she prepared for bits of brain and blood to . . .

A loud crack-snap-pop. All one sound as the window broke and Tadeki’s head tried to burst through his skin and scalp. The momentary image came as a flash, the man’s eyes squirting out from their sockets, face puffing, ears and hair popping wide. The body, gone to rubber, thumped the floor like loose bones. The big revolver hit with a clank.

Kalico stared, paralyzed, breath stopped in her lungs, heart thumping frantically in her chest. One instant, she’d been dead, now she wavered, starved of oxygen, the beginnings of the shakes energizing her muscles.

Tadeki lay in a loose heap. Thick red blood, along with pieces of brain, were squirting out of the holes in either side of his head. The man’s eyes were popped loose from the orbits, blood trickling from his nostrils, past his protruding tongue, and oozing from his ears.

The door opened. Kalico spun on her heel, barely cognizant of Shig’s stunned expression, the sweat beaded on his strained face.

Allison Chomko stepped across the threshold, her golden hair piled high and pinned by a clip adorned with a sparkling diamond the size of a walnut. Her classic Nordic face wore a pensive expression. She glanced sidelong at Tadeki’s bleeding body. “Sorry about your floor. It’s duraplast. A couple of swipes with a mop and it’ll be clean as new.”

“What the hell is going on here?” Kalico demanded, the shakes taking over with a vengeance.

“Hello, Shig,” Allison greeted.

Shig stepped uneasily over to the bar, lifted Kalico’s glass, and sucked down a full swig of the rye. “My,” he said wearily, “I didn’t see that coming. Perhaps my limbic system isn’t as fully under my control as I had once thought.”

Allison cocked a pale eyebrow. Indicated Tadeki. “Wasn’t sure about him. Didn’t know if he meant the things he was saying. Talina was out of town, or I would have turned it over to her. So, I had my people keeping an eye on him. Especially after he stole Gatlin’s pistol. When I heard he hotfooted it to your dome the moment he saw your shuttle landing, I thought I’d better come see.”

“You knew?”